Explore Indonesian Railway Journey

The performance of China's speed in Indonesia has also attracted the attention of netizens around the world. Indonesian netizens are very proud, commenting one after another, "It's like a dream, Indonesia finally has a bullet train with a top speed of 386 kilometers per hour." Southeast Asia is ahead!"

It can be seen that the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail will soon become a beautiful landscape in Indonesia and even Southeast Asia. Changing the lens, we switched from the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway to other railways in Indonesia to see different scenery. In this issue, we invited special guest Zhu Feng. He participated in the construction of the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway and went to Indonesia to experience the various local railways. Different, let us follow his footsteps and embark on a journey of exploring the Indonesian railway!

meter gauge passenger train

I had the opportunity to start the experience journey of the meter-gauge bus only when the track-laying project of the Jakarta-Bandung High-speed Railway was coming to an end. Rancaekek station has been upgraded this year, and I don't know what it used to be like. The rebuilt station looks small and exquisite, with bright colors and strange bones.

From the project camp, pass the stadium that looks like a bird's nest and the water mosque next to it, and then arrive at the Cimekar station that I once visited. Most of this section of the journey is single-track. When the double-track construction passed the camp, I had a close look at the local thermite welding process, and the production level was low. However, it is a seamless line after all, and the maintenance of the line has also achieved large-scale mechanized operations. During the construction of the tie line, the tamping vehicle of the train company KAI went online and appeared at the rail welding base.

The design speed of Indonesian meter-gauge passenger trains ranges from 50km/h to 100km/h. The fastest speed of the train we took reached 75km/h, but the shaking of the rear compartment was obvious.

It takes about 40 minutes to drive to Bandung (Bandung), the fourth largest city in Indonesia. The station looks very simple

Short Distance Train

Indonesia's railway construction has gone through hundreds of years, and currently has about 6,500 kilometers of railway mileage, but it is fragmented, with many short-distance and branch lines and few "transportation arteries". And there are more than a dozen types of line gauges ranging from 600 mm to 1435 mm, and a considerable part of them are old narrow gauge railways. The separated section of freight railway was named "oil palm railway", "sugar cane railway" and "pulp railway". They plundered local natural resources economically and economically, seldom considering the needs of people's livelihood. During the Japanese occupation, for military and freight purposes, Indonesia also had a line with three rails to satisfy locomotives of different gauges.

Take the 468 short-distance train back to Rancaekek, enter the waiting hall half an hour earlier, the station only puts in a hundred or ten people, the hall is a bit crowded, and there are two soldiers with live ammunition patrolling in the hall, which reminds me of this country once There have been many terrorist attacks. Enter the platform through the only ticket gate. No matter the size of the station, it is a high platform, which is convenient for passengers to get on and off.

The fare of short-distance trains is very low. From Rancaekek to Bandung, the round trip only costs 10,000 Indonesian rupiah (equivalent to 4.7 yuan), and the face of the ticket shows that there are government subsidies. In addition to paper tickets, the train company KAI is also vigorously promoting electronic tickets. When the track-laying work arrived at Halim Station, the terminus in Jakarta, I got the opportunity to take the intercity light rail and long-distance trains, and the ride experience was similar.

 

Long-distance Express

Long-distance express trains need to take the train at Gambir Station. The construction of the station has many modern elements, and there are elevators in the station for passengers to get on and off the platform. The carriage is designed to carry 80 passengers, with 4 people in each row. The middle part of the carriage is used as the dividing line, and the passengers sit face to face. The facilities in the car are more advanced than the short-distance trains I took before, with central air conditioning and a TV screen hanging.

The speed of the bus is not so fast. The journey from Jakarta to Bandung is about 150 kilometers, and it takes 2 hours and 40 minutes to run without stopping. I can’t see the scenery outside the window at night. The impression left on me is that the shaking of the car caused bumps. In my memory, I have never been on a train that shakes so badly. It shakes up and down, left and right, and front and back. To describe it in technical terms, the wheel-rail relationship is very bad, and the horizontal acceleration and vertical acceleration are superimposed to form the car body. The mixed swing of the car, passing through sections of seamed lines from time to time on the way, the wheels make rhythmic vibrations as they pass by. Looking from the connection between the No. 3 car where I was and the car, the door frame of No. 4 car was dancing with exaggerated amplitude. Most people sat obediently. I got up and tried it. It is very difficult to walk on the aisle when the train is moving.